


a land (a man) beloved by the goddess

by TenderVanilla



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Feels, Fluff, Follows in the vein of Verdant Wind except when it doesn't, Light Angst, Mute Byleth is very expressive, Mute My Unit | Byleth, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Verdant Wind Spoilers, claude is a disney prince, ms. von daphnel please step on me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22275703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenderVanilla/pseuds/TenderVanilla
Summary: "Once upon a time, there was a young man. And this man, he was a brilliant young man. For you see, he had a lofty dream. His dream was for all the brothers and sisters between different lands, sharing one sun, one sky, one moon, and all the stars, to live happily with each other. To laugh with each other. To cry with each other. To hold hands and stand next to each other in brotherhood and friendship."A Verdant Wind fairytale AU.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 11
Kudos: 44





	1. we could be heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The makings of a duke, and the pieces of a fragmented country. [part 1]

Once upon a time, there was a young man.

And this man, he was a brilliant young man. For you see, he had a lofty dream. His dream was for all the brothers and sisters between different lands, sharing one sun, one sky, one moon, and all the stars, to live happily with each other. To laugh with each other. To cry with each other. To hold hands and stand next to each other in brotherhood and friendship.

It was a wish that was borne from the blood of his bones, blood that was flawed only because a woman fell in love with a man on the wrong side of the border. And because these two sides that burned with a hatred for one another could never accept someone with blood from the other, this young man was hated viscerally and deeply.

Faced with the vitriol of his homeland, with his ambitions in one hand and his pack in the other, he loudly announced to his mother and father, “I’m going across the west! Across the border to Fódlan. How can I make my vision come true if I never leave my home? People might call me a lot of things, but one thing they’ll never be right about is calling me a hypocrite.”

His mother ran her fingers through his locks, fingering his braid and tracing the side of his cheek, eyes soft and smile tight. “Oh, my Claude. If you must see how the world is, then I cannot stop you. But before you decide to do anything hasty, you must first visit Lady Judith, the Hero of Daphnel. She will be of great help. This should help you win her over.”

She pressed into his hands a scented letter.

So, Claude set off, navigating past the tall pines of western Almyra and scaling the treacherous mountains of Fódlan’s Throat.

Lady Judith eyed him with a leer when he showed up at her doorstep. When he handed her the letter, however, she immediately ripped it open and scanned the curlicues of a handwriting she could never forget. Slender fingers wrapped around Claude’s jaw and pressed into his cheeks with a firm grip. Her eyes met his in a hard stare.

“I know those eyes from anywhere,” said Lady Judith between clenched teeth. “You’re your mother’s son, alright. Come.”

His first taste of Fódlan was Leicester Cortania tea brewed by the Hero of Daphnel. It was a perfumed and sophisticated blend different from that of his hometown. It tickled his nose, but it wasn’t wholly unpleasant; by the fifth sip, its nuances came to him as refined with a bitter edge. A proud tea with humble beginnings.

The Hero of Daphnel received her title by securing the most lucrative parts of the land in the Daphnel name from House Galatea. And despite what everyone would tell you, it wasn’t through the power of force, but rather a shrewd game of politics. Daphnel lands, being straddled by two rivers, were fertile and rich and blessed enough to nurture fields upon fields of radiant indigo and safflower. As it turned out, Daphnel threads were some of the finest in the land, radiant, and the most assured attention-grabber at any ball. A bolt of cloth tastefully tagged with the Daphnel seal was worth its weight in gold.

“We’ll have you looking like a Fódlandian noble worthy of the Riegan name in no time,” Judith said, smirk hidden behind the rim of her teacup. “How the tables have turned. The last time I did something like this was the night we snuck your mother out to catch a wedding across the border. Her own wedding, that is. I remember the way my fingers pressed into her hips— “

Claude nearly choked on his tea. “Lady Judith, please do _not_ continue that sentence.”

“None of this ‘lady’ nonsense, boy, you’re making me feel old. Can your sensitive ears not handle the truth? She might have never told you, but I was her first for many things.”

Claude wheezed. “I’ll do anything you say, Judith _. Just. Please._ ”

When Claude was presented before Duke Riegan, swathed in Leicester gold and his winningest smile, the duke was less than impressed. Judith had mentioned that ever since the death of his only son a year ago, Duke Riegan had become more withdrawn. The burden of his grief manifested into coughs that wracked his body, and a cantankerousness that drove the Roundtable close to tearing their hairs out. Thus, the Leicester Alliance as a whole became more withdrawn, its nobles unwilling to rally or even be in the presence of their crotchety leader.

The finality of the duke’s heavy cane striking the floor pierced the chamber. “The blood that courses in you may grant you sanctuary in this manor and all of Derdriu, but mark my words—as Godfrey lies cold in his grave, I will never accept you as worthy to unite this land.”

Any lesser man would scamper off, whimpering at the Duke’s withering proclamation and imposing stare. But adversity was a specter that shadowed Claude’s every move since the day he was born, and he quickly learned to dance with it, even when it hung around his neck and grasped at this throat.

He smoothened the edges of his smile to a more placating, submissive turn of his lips and bowed deeply. “I am forever indebted to your generosity, Your Grace.”

“And what of your grand plans now, boy? Did you really expect the duke to welcome you with open arms?” Judith asked him over a dinner of Derdriu pheasant that night. Duke Riegan had retired midway after a fit of hacking into his silk handkerchief.

He picked at the protein on his plate, scraping his fork across droplets of oil. Fódlanese cuisine could be so rich—bursting with sugar, laden with cheese, or enrobed in cream—but so one-dimensional. It was times like these that he found his tongue longing for the layered complexities of the spices at home, how it brightened, colored, and heated his palate without requiring much at all.

“Ah, ye of little faith. Duke Riegan says I’m unfit to unite Leicester? Time will tell if it’s true.”

Already the cogs in his mind turned, dissecting the map of Leicester into manageable parts, each section with its own requirements and objectives to meet before he could truly sew together this patchwork quilt of a country that was falling apart at the seams, unbonded by a common goal.

“Oh?” Judith arched a brow. “And how do you propose we do that with a country that refuses to be within the same room as their own leader?”

“Easy, Judith. We go back to the start—back east.”

\---

In House Goneril territory, at the foot of the mountains where the hills rolled and the tall grass tickled softly at each other, a flower field flourished and thrived, nourished by the cool waters that cleaved their way down from the mountains. It was said that because of this pure, unadulterated water, the flowers here grew vibrant and lovely and could warm the iciest, most secluded heart.

It was here that Claude and Judith found the only daughter of House Goneril. In the midst of crafting bracelets of soft lilies of the valley highlighted by colorful anemones, she was absentmindedly plucking the petals off daisies, her lips moving “She does…She does not…She does…Does not…”

She flicked it away and stood up when they approached, brushing off her skirt and politely greeting the Lady Daphnel.

“No need, dear Hilda. Formalities mean little to an old lady like me.”

Hilda turned her head to Claude. “And who are you?”

“I’m Claude von Riegan. Grandson of the Duke Riegan.” He politely bent low at the waist. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet a lady of the famed House Goneril I’ve heard so much about.”

The fact that the duke had a grandson was news to Hilda, but anything regarding the Roundtable was more of Holst’s business than hers anyway. “If you’re looking for Holst, he’s at the Locket, as usual. I swear that meathead loves being up there more than being at the house. I have no idea why—”

“Actually, Hilda, we were hoping to have an audience with you,” Claude interjected.

“Me?” Her eyes widened. An audience? With her? What business could anyone have with her?

Judith strode forward. “We hear that you’re quite the craftswoman. I myself received a visitor from the Kingdom the other week wearing a beautiful necklace of silver and stone radiant with a color rare to the Kingdom. Said it was a Goneril original. Now, I may be wrong, but I’m willing to wager that necklace was not of Holst’s doing. We’d just like to congratulate you on a job well done and stoke the flames of your creativity.”

From their convoy, Claude dragged out a chest and kicked it open to reveal glass beads the colors of the twilight sky—deep blues, pinks, and purples, lustrous opals and precious stones not easily found in Fódlan. Combs and hair clips made of silver and ivory. Silk ribbons and, of course, Daphnel cloth.

Claude watched the glimmer in Hilda’s eyes as she breathlessly traced the beads with the tips of her fingers.

“Where did you even get these? Nothing like this exists anywhere in Fódlan,” she breathed.

For her birthday, Holst usually gifted her pretty stones and woven scarfs from the eastern lands, but none of them were ever as opalescent or as fine as the ones gleaming at her from within the wooden chest.

“I see these are to your liking, then.” Claude smiled. A sharp-toothed kind of smile that only showed itself when he achieved the perfect ratio for a poison or when his would-be tormentors played right into his hand. “These are all yours, Hilda. Consider it a gift from House Riegan as a token for our continued relations, and for an artist to take her talents to new heights. Maybe even fashion one for the beauty in your eyes.” His eyes lingered on the flower bracelets around Hilda’s wrists.

After a moment to recompose herself, Hilda seemed to remember who she was, and who she was talking to. Because although she might have been frolicking in a field of flowers, Hilda’s was one with thorns not to be underestimated.

“I don’t know who you are, Claude von Riegan,” she said, with perhaps more force than she meant to. “But if you think for one second that you can bribe me to get to my brother, well…” Hilda glanced at the chest again. The silver of a hair ornament winked at her. It would make _her_ look so beautiful. “…well, you’ve got another thing coming. House Riegan has really been asking a lot out of Holst lately, and if this is your way of getting him to do what you want, then think again.”

Claude flashed her his empty palms while his mind filed away another grievance for House Riegan. He hadn’t expected her to immediately trust him, but neither did he expect such a ferocity to burst forth from her. “That’s not it at all,” he assured her. “I don’t know what my grandfather as demanded from House Goneril, but I can promise you that I don’t come with expectations.”

Hilda was not entirely convinced, as evidenced by the jutting of her lower lip.

“We should get going, boy, if we are to make it to Margrave Edmund’s territory by the afternoon tomorrow.”

Hilda perked up like a rabbit finding a carrot stick, her claws retracting at the mention of Claude and Judith’s next destination. “Wait, you’re going to see Margrave Edmund? I’m coming with you! Just give me a moment to pack a few things and send a letter off to Holst. It won’t take long at all, promise!”

She had barely finished her sentence before she dashed off on her horse.

\---

If Claude didn’t know any better, he would have thought that Margrave Edmund’s adoptive daughter was a ghost walking amongst the living, as sickly as she looked. Dark circles around her eyes. Thin and white as smoke. As if she could dissolve and disappear at the slightest breeze.

But there was something human in the way she smiled when Hilda rode up to the estate and threw her arms around her. A rosy warmth shyly peeking out at the apex of her cheeks when Hilda slipped around her neck a string of beads the color of blue frost, beads she had just been gifted only a day before.

“It’s beautiful, Marianne! It looks so lovely on you.” Hilda beamed.

“Do you…do you really think so?” And then, remembering herself, she slipped her fingers like water out of Hilda’s grasp. “We shouldn’t be rude…to Lady Daphnel and her friend.”

“Don’t mind us!” Claude exclaimed, tearing his eyes away from a pair of deer, a doe and a buck, languidly napping underneath a mulberry tree. “I’ve never been in Edmund territory before. It’s amazing to all these deer roaming around.”

“I had no idea the duke had a grandson,” Marianne said that afternoon as they gathered in the lush greenhouse for tea, a tender, placating blend of lavender and chamomile.

“We’ve only recently reconnected.”

“I see. I suppose the duke doesn’t speak much these days. About anything. Not since…the accident. He must be very sad and lonely. But even more…he refuses to be saved.”

Under the table, Hilda shifted her legs, her calves brushing against Marianne’s underneath her long skirt.

“It’s impossible to help a man who refuses to help himself,” Claude said solemnly before shifting the tension that threatened to blanket the table. “Anyway, I’m not here to chat about him; I’d love to hear more about the deer around here.”

If you asked the margrave, he would tell you that the deer that grazed peacefully at the grass and slumbered in the shadow of the trees descended from sacred protectors of the Leicester Alliance themselves, but it was hard to tell if they could even come close to the glory of its ancestors as fat and indolent as they were. He had gone to great lengths to seek, domesticate, and breed these deer, for once every year, between the Pegasus Moon and the Lone Moon, the stags would shed their antlers, antlers which were highly valued for their healing properties. A panacea for a variety of ailments, the margrave harbored these deer for a steady supply of their antlers for Marianne and her feeble disposition.

(The margrave’s wife always said with an annoyed click of her tongue that Marianne’s condition would ameliorate with things like outside air, refreshing companionship, and the opportunity to experience the world outside of her ivory tower, but those insights were always steamrolled by the margrave’s fretting.)

Thus weekly, Marianne would have an ounce of deer antler ground into her nighttime tea, and even when her pallor improved the next morning, by the end of the week, the color in her face would yet again fade.

“It must be hard on you, Marianne. But who’s to say that it’s not the effects of the supposedly fabled antlers that are failing you?”

Marianne’s lashes lowered as her eyes fell to her hands clasped in her lap. “I know my father only does it out of concern for me,” she said, voice as wispy as the hair framing her face. She would be pretty, beautiful even, if she wasn’t so gaunt. “It’s definitely my fault…I’m the broken one. It would be undue to blame anything else.”

Hilda failed to hold back the hand that she placed over Marianne’s.

“Well, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Claude insisted. “The only way to know is to test its effects on somebody else.” He twisted his mouth in thought, seemingly trying to conjure a tidbit of information misplaced somewhere in the depths of his mind. “Judith, didn’t you say the count hasn’t been feeling well for a fortnight now?”

She nodded, lips pursed. “I’ve received news that Count Gloucester has been plagued by fevers and chills for half a Moon, and his son is beside himself with worry. As such, their territory has fallen into a state of disarray.”

“You don’t think…maybe…”

Marianne seemed to arrive at the same conclusion. “My father…we’ve never shared the antlers with anyone else, afraid that somebody might seek to take it for themselves. But...I also cannot ignore the suffering of another.” With all the grace and fervor her frail body could muster, she rose out of her seat. “I won’t let my condition or my father stop me. I will see to it that I personally deliver a vial to Count Gloucester…if you’ll allow me to join your traveling party, Claude.”

“Marianne, I would love nothing more.”

Hilda pressed her fingers against her temples. “Going to see the count and his son is going to be a pain and a half,” she muttered under her breath. “But if you’re going Marianne, then I guess I have no choice.”

…

The journey to House Gloucester would be a long one, and with their larger party, Judith and Claude thought it was prudent to journey into town to restock on supplies.

Their night ended at the local tavern as they opted to leave Marianne and the Margrave to rest.

“So this is your grand plan, is it?” Judith lifted a foaming tankard to her lips. “To reunite this country by reaching out to its posterity.” She chuckled deep and low in her throat. “It’s a plan that’s unconventional and ambitious enough only for you, boy. But it might just be crazy enough to save this unhappy, self-absorbed land.”

“Judith, was that a compliment? I’ll have to burn this into memory,” he grinned, tongue in cheek and hands wrapped around a tankard of his own. “But I’ll have to admit, I couldn’t have pulled half of this off without you. Why have you been letting me drag you all around Leicester, anyway?”

The smirk on Judith’s lips oddly reminded Claude of somebody. “Ever heard the saying to never look a gift horse in the mouth? But since we’re being honest, I can tell you that you bring back a spark to the Leicester Alliance that I haven’t seen since your mother left.”

In that moment, Claude came to a realization. Something he should have caught the moment the blues of Judith’s irises bored into his own green ones. When he laughed, she probably heard it. When he schemed, she probably (definitely) saw it. When Claude fell asleep once in a sea of books on his bed in the Daphnel house, and he awoke and found them all neatly stacked on his desk with his covers over his chest, he probably already knew it. Something that twisted in Judith’s chest from the very simple act of him _breathing_.

“You really loved her, didn’t you?”

“Loved her?” Judith laughed an echoing laugh that rang in Claude’s ears despite the raucous tavern patrons. “Boy…who said I ever stopped?”

\---

The rosebushes of the Gloucester House were, undoubtedly, the cream of the crop. Resplendent, like ruby gems nestled in emerald satin in the sunlight, and sweetly perfuming the night air during the summertime Moons.

At least, that’s what Claude might have said if he could get past the gates of the Gloucester estate.

“Sincerest apologies to Lady Daphnel and her traveling company,” the gatekeeper bellowed at them from his post, his voice echoing inside his headgear. “But Count Gloucester is in a dire state and refuses to have visitors. Those are my orders.”

“That’s what we’re _saying_. We have something to _help_ , you imbecile.” A vein bulged at Judith’s temple. “How much do you think the count will pay you for following orders when he’s dead?”

Before Judith could provoke the gatekeeper any further, a voice called from behind it.

“Open the gate, you fool! Do you not realize who this is? The Hero of Daphnel, one of the most noble of all nobles. _Honestly_.”

Even at the corner of his eye, Claude saw Hilda cringe visibly.

“That voice…there’s only one person in all of Leicester with a voice that could sound so full of himself,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

“Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, at your service, milady.”

Lorenz Hellman Gloucester crossed the mouth of the entrance and bent low to Judith before cradling her gloved hand to his lips.

“Indeed,” Judith eyed him dubiously, snatching her hand back. “Gloucester boy, we have no time for this. Take us to your father immediately. We have something that may cure his sickness.”

Judith stepped to the side to reveal Marianne, tightly clenching a glass vial filled with a fine, shimmering dust tied around her neck.

Although Lorenz was evidently surprised to see Marianne and Hilda accompanying Judith, it was nowhere near the level of suspicion he threw Claude with the brief narrowing of his eyes when he introduced himself as the duke’s grandson.

“Apparently, you’ve all heard about my father,” Lorenz sighed, and for a moment, Lorenz’s shoulders sagged and all the grim shadows of the past two weeks were overlaid onto his face. “I fear he may be on his last leg. Come, this way.”

Roses and gardenias fragranced the courtyard as they crossed it to enter the Gloucester house. Inside, Lorenz lead them down the long, elaborate hallways. Their feet shuffled over polished floors. Chandeliers hung from towering ceilings. The Riegan abode or the Gloucester’s—it was hard to say which one was more lavish and decorated. It left no feeling of doubt as to what kind of family lived there.

The room where Count Gloucester slept fitfully, sweat beading on his forehand and gaping mouth gasping for water every hour, was dimly lit as they all crowded in the room. Marianne yanked the vial off her neck and handed it to Lorenz.

“Pour all of it into his tea for him to drink down,” she instructed, mouth in a firm line and a fire inside her chest blazing with more life than her face had ever shown.

Lorenz obeyed. By the time the sun had set, the etches of pain and pestilence on the count’s face had smoothened out into a placid mask.

The whole Gloucester household exhaled with a sigh of relief. So grateful were they to their visitors that Lorenz insisted for them to stay for dinner and overnight.

“I must thank you, Marianne. My father and I…the whole Gloucester family is indebted to you,” Lorenz said, breathing in the scent of bergamot in his teacup after dinner.

Marianne fidgeted under the weight of his regard. She shook her head. “It was Claude’s idea…I had no idea what you and your family were going through.”

A sound escaped from Lorenz mid-sip. Something between disbelief and the return of his previous suspicion that was previously set aside in light of the crucial situation.

“Is that so? Our mysterious savior, is it? The man who will swoop in to save our country and a family thrown into turmoil in the absence of an heir.”

A cool grin found its way onto Claude’s face. His hands threaded the hairs at the nape of his neck. And even when a small part of him knew better, Lorenz made it too easy.

“You’re being far too generous with your praise, Lord Gloucester. I am but a simple man. I want what you want: peace and prosperity for the Leicester Alliance.”

Lorenz scoffed. “That kind of easy attitude is exactly why we’re in the situation that we are now. House Riegan has its hands in a fair share of the shattered reputation of the Alliance. I would be remiss in my duty as a noble of this land to simply accept you as next in line to head the Roundtable.”

“And I wouldn’t expect you to, Lorenz. Titles are much easier to obtain than trust, wouldn’t you say?”

“That is where you are wrong, Claude. A title _is_ trust. To have a title means you are entrusted by the people of the land to make decisions toward the benefit of many. Those decisions aren’t always easy. They come with a certain gravitas that I wouldn’t expect an individual with a lackadaisical attitude like yours to understand.”

“Ah yes, gravitas. Well, you see, this attitude may be something I can learn to grow out of. But you know that look that nobles have? Looks like they have pegasus manure smeared under their nose all the time? You know, the one you wear so well? I think that might be a permanent fixture. "

“Why you insolent—”

_SLAM!_

The sound of a fist pounding onto the table cracked the air, rattling teacups as well as everyone sitting around it.

In the complete silence, Hilda was standing, one hand curled into a fist with her knuckles motionless on the wood.

She sank back down to her chair and brought her cup and saucer back toward her with unwavering hands.

“ _Boys_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what if...garreg mach was never a thing?...and byleth was a goddess sent to Fodlan by a wish? haha jk...unless...?
> 
> I fear I might have mislead everyone under the pretense of Claude/Byleth.
> 
> But have no fear! It, and Byleth, shall come in time. I have to give my precious Golden Deer some love.
> 
> Also, thank you for reading my first game and Fire Emblem fic! Claude von Riegan, you are the most benevolent muse.


	2. all falls down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> here, dukes are made, not born. [part 2]
> 
> and
> 
> have you ever heard of the Festival of the Fell Star?

Almyran sunrises were nothing like the ones in Fódlan.

The rising Almyran sun was a growing, glowing flame that burned in a passionate glory by noontime, and the people underneath it could rise to its call or cower in the shade. A man caught woefully unprepared could burn in its glory, another could forge his name to be just as bright and splendorous underneath its flames; it cared not. It rose and fell in an endless, eternal dance with the moon.

The sun peeking over the horizon in the Gloucester lands was soft and gentle. Its rays caressed the rosebushes and cast a glimmer over the dewy green fields past the manor. The morning breeze tickled the nape of Claude’s neck. He filled his lungs with the crisp morning air as he calmed the bustling inside his head.

As early as it was, he was evidently not the first one up. Somebody else was already admiring the Fódlan sunrise that morning, standing on a hilly mound a short walk away from the manor with his easel set up and his paints laid out. His brush, however, was still in his hand as he contemplated the perfect mix of colors to capture the colors of the sky as it welcomed a new day.

“That’s fine work you have there,” Claude shouted to the young man as he climbed up the hillside. “Even I can tell all the way from back there.” He tilted his head to gesture in the direction of the house.

The painter laughed, ears flushing pink in the sunlight. “Not at all. The beauty of nature speaks for itself. I’m just the lowly artist trying to capture even only a drop of it.”

“Nothing lowly about your art at all.” Claude peered over the artist to examine the canvas. Deliberate, careful brushstrokes attested to an acute attention to detail. Brilliant, natural colors that encapsulated the duality of nature—its warmths and calms and how their juxtapositions made life a beauty to gaze upon. And yet, it was a cautious kind of style, one that reflected that of a young man who dared not to color outside of the lines that nature defined.

“Maybe one day, the generations after us will know of your name and artwork. Uh, your name being…”

“Ignatz. Ignatz Victor. And you are?”

“Claude,” he replied. “You can just call me Claude.”

“It’s a pleasure to be of your acquaintance then, Claude. I appreciate your kind words, but I’m just trying to imitate what is already beautiful, after all.” Ignatz turned his back to Claude to marvel at the open fields in the distance, the sun already fully above the horizon. He sighed in the breath of an admirer’s sigh when he gazes upon a lovely portrait of his lover. “There’s something incredibly tranquil about the lands in Gloucester territory. I’m very lucky Lorenz came across my work in a village marketplace and then commissioned me to paint its landscape.”

“Then, why are you saying that with such a long face?”

Ignatz blinked, the passion in his eyes extinguished. Whether he meant for his melancholy to be so blatant or was surprised he was figured out so quickly, his whole demeanor warped from the contemplated, focused artist before to a mere mouse, one with its tail caught in the jaws of a fate he could not escape.

“Well…you see Claude, when I left home to come to the Gloucester estate, I left a friend behind. And with him, a few regrets. By the time I return, he’ll be gone. Not to mention, the promise I made to my parents to take up a more honorable position in the Alliance military after I have fulfilled my commission with Lorenz and Count Gloucester. This might be…the first and last time I take on a project like this.”

How lamentable Ignatz’s position was struck a chord within Claude. In some ways, his blood was cursed, but in some ways…it placed him in an enviable position. If he didn’t have a trove of resources in a distant land. If he wasn’t the grandson of a sovereign duke. If his mother didn’t still have such intimate relations still in the Alliance. If he was simply another young man, with all the dreams in the world but no power to make them come true.

When Claude had awoken early for meditation this morning, he hadn’t been expecting this kind of heavy introspection. He had aimed to clear his mind, to dispel any fog of a doubt so that he could more clearly focus on what needed to get done.

But, he thought walking back to the Gloucester manor as its inhabitants were beginning to stir, perhaps not all surprises were unwelcome. And it wasn’t always bad to get more than what you bargained for.

_“Before you give up on your dream as an artist, Ignatz, you should let the artist in you live a little. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Gloucester territory is nice, but…there’s so much more the world has to offer. And what you can offer to the world. So, what do you think? We can start with the rest of Leicester. Then Fódlan. Then…who knows?”_

\---

“Claude, I’d like to apologize for my behavior last night. It was most unbecoming of me as a noble and to the Gloucester family name to insult the guest of the family. I hope you can find it in you to forgive my lack of discretion.”

It was an uncanny gift of his, for Lorenz to be able to still look so proud and dignified while making an apology. He stirred his morning tea slowly and deliberately, regarding Claude with a cool gaze he took a sip.

“Of course. No offense taken, Lorenz. As I see it, you hold yourself to a high standard, and expect others to follow suit.” Claude met Lorenz’s eyes with his own, one that danced with amusement and mirth rather than fire and brimstone.

“Indeed.” He set his cup down, porcelain gently clinking. “Finally, we can agree on something. And as such, I will have you know that I will be closely monitoring you in my decision on whether or not you are worthy to succeed Duke Riegan. Mark my words, Claude, if I ever discover you are so much as contemplating an act in the disinterest of the people of the Alliance, I will send you back to the magical portal from which you came from, myself.

“I hear you loud and clear, Lorenz,” said Claude with a voice easy and airy despite staring into the eyes of a tiger, fangs bared and hot breath puffing. “One step out of line, and I’m gone. Got it.”

On the other end of the table, Hilda rolled her eyes. Marianne discreetly pushed a mollifying slice of warm, buttered bread underneath her nose. Ignatz hastily ate what was on his plate with the fear that somebody might flip the table over. Judith silently and dispassionately imbibed her morning tea, unruffled by all the nonsense around her.

Lorenz buttered a slice with all the restrained grace of a noble in spite of his tightly clenched jawline. “Very well. Now that we have a mutual understanding, allow me to fulfill my duty as host and take you on a tour of the Gloucester lands. It might interest you to know that our territory is bountiful enough in its production of foods to feed the Alliance army for a year, if you can believe it. The milk from our cows, the leaves in our tea—you simply cannot find better elsewhere.”

…

“…Gloucester Blend Number Six is, quite simply, the most exquisite, unparalleled tea of the Leicester Alliance—no, of all Fódlan. It is as my father says, there is no noble that cannot be charmed, no heart that cannot be won over by this tea!”

Lorenz laughed fully and triumphantly, throwing his head back and nose high.

And indeed, it was a tea like no other. With one sip, it relaxed the mind and eased the senses. With two sips, any strife and toil gripping the mind were replaced by a light, giddy feeling. With three sips, an impossibly euphoric sensation took over. As for more than five sips? Well, if you hadn’t fallen into a peaceful sleep filled with nothing but the sweetest dreams by then, you might be touching heaven itself. Or so the rumor goes.

Gloucester Blend Number Six, its namesake stemming from the blend of six leaves and flowers—one of which bloomed only one night out of the year during the Garland Moon—that composed it, was House Gloucester’s pride and joy. And since such a powerful concoction with the ability to bring men to their knees could have such dire consequences, House Gloucester decided long ago that access to it would be highly guarded, although the course of history might show bouts of a misstep here and there.

“Of course, the effects vary from person to person. And although a tolerance to its effects may be built, I do beseech you to drink with caution,” Lorenz said with a pointed glance to his guests. He had led them to a secret cottage at a remote edge of the Gloucester fields to sample his family’s infamous tea as a sign of goodwill.

He tipped tea into five cups. Judith had remained at the house to have a word with the now-revived count. They all took a tiny, cautious sip.

“Lorenz, this tea is delicious!” Hilda squealed.

Marianne’s countenance also glowed with delight, color like life returning to her face. Ignatz’s flush returned to his ears as a visible warmth grew from his neck up. Claude could feel the grin plastered on his cheeks, uncontrived and light, just like how his head felt. But in the corner of his mind like an anchor, he stopped himself from raising the cup to his lips once more, knowing full well the slippery slope of overindulgence. The most prized tea of House Gloucester was as dangerous as it was enchanting.

“Isn’t it? It makes a most wonderful sleep tonic, in the right amounts—”

_WHAM._

The cottage door flew open and slammed into the wall, shuddering the frame and effectively causing everybody to jump to their feet.

Judith’s form stood in the frame of the doorway; her mouth twisted in a line.

“How did you f—” Lorenz started to sputter before Judith’s curt tone nipped any kind of questions or protests.

“Claude. Lorenz. The rest of you all. Our prompt presence is requested at House Ordelia. Now. And bring a few sachets of your Gloucester blend. We’re making a house call.”

\---

“Lady Judith…are you saying that the only remaining child of House Ordelia…has not slept in almost a Moon?” Marianne’s voice wavered with worry as she clasped a hand over her heart.

The campfire’s glow made the gauntness of Judith’s face even deeper. She nodded.

“House Ordelia sent a messenger, pleading to the count on behalf of the head of House Ordelia for any kind of remedy he might be growing in his vast lands. He was about to send the messenger back with a price…until I stepped in. I even offered to save Count Gloucester the trouble of ensuring its safe delivery by doing it myself,” Judith said, the shadow of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.

It only took Lorenz a beat to realize what she truly meant by that. He opened his mouth to speak, but Hilda chimed in.

“Marianne, I wonder if your medicine could also help in this case,” she wondered aloud, chin perched at the heels of her palm.

Marianne shook her head. “The antler seems to only work on what the body deems to be foreign. Illnesses that come from outside. But in Lysithea’s situation…” She wrapped her shawl closer to her frail body in the cooler night air. Hilda scooted closer to her. “Her condition may be self-inflicted. My medicine cannot be of any use to her.”

The fire crackled as the night hummed a steady tune, a pleasant melody if it wasn’t for the solemn situation at hand.

“I hear House Ordelia is home to the most splendid library of all the Alliance. With a grand staircase, like a ballroom filled with books, shelves from ceiling to floor with books that date back to hundreds of years prior,” said Ignatz. “It’s quite fortunate that for the most part, it…survived the Great Fire a few years ago.”

The mention of the Great Fire ushered a frosty chill of silence.

Although it occurred a decade ago, the Great Fire was the most tragic event in the recent times of House Ordelia. Some say it started in the kitchens, a forgetful servant regrettably neglecting to turn out the stove’s flames before going to bed. Others argue that it was from a rogue pipe left smoldering in the parlor. But however it started, the end was always the same—the loss of the lives of all the Ordelia family children, except one small girl. Lysithea. And despite using her body to shield the last breaths of her departing cousin, her body suffered no burns. Not a single scar or pockmark. However, she did not come out. Her soft, brown hair, that tickled her chin and framed her round, rosy face, had been singed off by the ravenous flames, and when it grew back, it was white as snow. With the loss of the childhood toys in her bedroom, Lysithea’s head was full of ghosts, white strands like the translucent figures that haunted her memory. With the loss of her siblings and cousins, Lysithea lost her innocence. And with the loss of her family, Lysithea became feared by others.

Even when the flames’ embers had long since faded, the grief and misguided whispers about something no one fully understood smoldered.

She’s not human. I heard her mother made a deal with the devil. She gave birth to a half-demon.

How does somebody bear the burdens of a hatred thrust onto them, without them doing or asking for anything that would warrant that hatred at all?

It was a question that Claude pondered on as he skipped stones across the river, unable to sleep despite everybody else’s easy slumber with Judith as the night guard. Every tumble of a pebble echoed as his search to find the answer beat relentlessly in his mind.

The Ordelia family home was only another half a day away. Maybe he’d have an answer for her then.

Or maybe he’d spend his whole life searching. Because despite his familiarity with the question, he wasn’t sure if he knew of an answer or simply ways to just cope with the reality of it.

Or maybe he could forge a world in which such questions were obsolete. Who’s to say, really?

\---

“I know what you’re doing.”

As young as she was, her voice spoke with an exasperation and frustration that far outstretched the youth of her years. It was frayed with tiredness, fatigue like a million fingerprints on a windowpane that smeared its clarity.

“Stop treating me like a child. I know what that is—I know what that does. But you don’t understand. I have to do this. I can’t stop. I can’t sleep. Not with…the amount of time I have left. So just go! I’m not drinking that, and you can’t make me!”

Lysithea’s mother was pushed out of Lysithea’s room, looking thoroughly harassed.

If it was any other child, then any other mother would have clicked her teeth and fired back with retorts of her own, pride and fury clashing in a battle of will. But Lady Ordelia simply shook her head and solemnly apologized to her guests for her child’s behavior, asking them not to judge her so harshly, Lysithea never means to be mean, she’s just very dedicated, and would they like settle into some tea after coming all this way, maybe even stay the night, it’s been so long since House Ordelia had guests over.

…

The Ordelia courtyard was much more modest than that of the Gloucester family home. Whereas lush, neatly trimmed rose bushes reigned supreme there, lilies were the choice flowers here. Beds of them were tastefully arranged around a contemplative, gently cascading fountain, the radiance of the stargazer lilies unable to be muted by the cloak of the night. It was moments like these that Claude thanked his inability to sleep at night, for such tranquility would be lost to him in the daytime’s restlessness.

But he lent full credit to the fountain, which captivated Claude for enough time as the crystal droplets caught onto the moonlight like a rain of stars, that he able to find her, shakily, slowly, but doggedly crossing the stone path that cut through the courtyard and connected the sleeping quarters to the main hall where the kitchen and dining room were. He could see the candlelight shivering along with her hand.

“Careful! Your candle’s going to spill.”

His remark had been with the best of intentions, but it probably worked to Lysithea’s detriment as she nearly jumped out of her skin and covered her mouth with her free hand to keep from shrieking and waking the whole estate.

“Y-you! What are you doing out here?! I thought everyone was asleep!” Lysithea whispered fiercely with a scowl as deep and unforgiving as winter in Faerghus to match. Even in the dim light of the lone candle, Claude could see the deep rings beneath her lower lashes.

He shrugged. “Nothing like a midnight stroll to let the mind wander. Are you doing the same?”

“Who would willingly want to walk around at this hour? Not when there’s—n…never mind. I’m only out here because—because…”

Lysithea’s stomach growled, crying out even louder than the splashing of the courtyard’s fountain.

“Ah.”

Her telltale stomach and remembering Lysithea’s absence at dinner despite her father’s insistence was all the answer Claude needed.

“It’s not what you think! I—I’m only going to the kitchens to check if all the stoves are turned off, so…so that…!” Lysithea protested despite the color dusting her cheeks.

“How brave of you, considering how you were shaking harder than a leaf in a rainstorm just now. I guess I have no choice but to accompany you there in your courageous journey to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself,” he declared, fist striking the air, face in a playful mask of mock determination.

‘“What insolence to assume that I need someone’s help to get there…I’m no child, I can get there myself.”

Her irritated grumblings as she trailed Claude’s heels only served to make him grin, one she might have caught if she hadn’t been boring a hole into the back of his head.

In the absence of life, the kitchen was cold, almost terrifying as the moonlight filtering in casted mysterious shadows, and noises, dripping, scuffling, clacking were made inexplicable in the darkness.

“Well, it looks like everything’s good here. Nothing that could cause any fire whatsoever,” Claude said after pacing around the kitchen. He didn’t bother to mention that, ever since the incident, the kitchen servants now checked five times over to prevent any such tragedy.

“Are you sure? I thought I smelled the oven baking today.”

“Oh, you mean the cake that was served at dinner? The one made with Gloucester milk and cream, highly regarded as the finest of all the Alliance?” Claude couldn’t help his (sterling) Lorenz impression.

“Yes. That,” she said through gritted teeth. Lysithea’s hunger was almost palpable. It would be almost cruel to feign ignorance to what she was _really_ fishing for any longer.

“Oven’s cold as ice, but…if you’re looking for any leftovers, I think I saw a maid put in the cupboard on the left over there.”

She darted to the cupboard in a blur and hoisted her prize with a soft gasp. A third of a cake leftover from the dinner she had skipped out on, still pristine, dusted with sugar and studded with bright, glossy berries.

Lysithea didn’t even bother with any sort of decorum, electing to dig into the cake whole. Which worked out in the end, seeing as how, fifteen minutes later, there was nothing but crumbs left anyway.

“Seeing as how quickly you inhaled that…might do you some good to have something to wash it down with.” Claude slid a steaming cup of tea towards her. “I promise it’s just the apple blend I found in the kitchen. Nothing that’ll affect how you feel,” he added at the suspicious look she eyed him and the teacup with.

The look persisted until she was able to confirm his assertion with a careful sip. Her eyes temporarily slid closed as she allowed the sweetness and warmth of the tea to wash over her.

He scanned her face in silence. After a meal (if you could call it that) of cake and tea, the darkness under Lysithea’s eyes mellowed if only slightly, and her voice, previously dulled by exhaustion, sharpened with the injection of sugar and energy.

“Why are you here, Claude?” She asked, her voice quiet and low, still waters that precede upcoming torrents.

At that moment, it struck him that as enclosed and inconspicuous that Lysithea had made herself, she was listening, always listening, and she had gathered his name somehow, even when he had never formally introduced himself.

It struck him, too, that Lysithea had also never formally introduced herself, that he learned her name and bits and pieces of her off the lips of another, and just because you went on a little scavenger hunt to the kitchen, it’s only when a lioness isn’t starving anymore that she begins to bare her fangs. Up until now, he had been gallivanting with a Lysithea who retracted her claws in a search to cure her hunger. But this was different.

This was Lysithea, fangs, claws, and all her walls.

“Don’t you know who I am? The demon girl who survived a fire that killed all the other children. If you really are going to be in line to become the next duke, what reason do you have with someone like me? Are you here to fix me? That kind of pity is reprehensible. Oh, I know. You want to fix me to curry favor in hopes to unite the fragmented Alliance.”

“Lysithea, I’m not here to fix you. You can accept the Gloucester Tea that we’ve brought, or not. I’m not here to make choices for you. I’m here to know the truth.”

“The truth?”

“Yes. The truth of what happened that night.”

Lysithea took a shuddering breath, and for a moment, Claude thought he might be pushing this girl, this little girl who was barely a teenager but carried the grief and heartbreak and the weight of her family and their ghosts like she had lived and died five times over, too far.

But to do that was to make her decisions for her, to treat her like a child like she so despised.

“The truth is what you want, is it? Then…here it is. All those rumors, they’re true. I did it. I killed them.”

She told him about the origins of her birth, how she was born without breath, and her mother had made a deal with a mage with powerful magic but dark endeavors to save her child. How he saved her by truncating her lifespan but also imbuing her blood with fearsome fire magic to one day, in his words, “bring down a goddess.” How one night, her brothers and sisters wanted to play hide-and-seek despite her protests. A younger brother snuck up on her. Sparks crackled from her fingertips. Flames everywhere. Screaming everywhere. Children trapped in crevices where it was hard to be found. But because it was her own magic, it could never hurt her. It torched her hair, her soul, but never her skin. And the only way she could ever make amends for her sins was to confine herself in either her room or the library, pouring over books upon books to try to find a way to scour herself of her tainted blood. Blood for blood. It was how it should be. She would never be able to rest until she was sure that another incident like the Great Fire could never happen again, until she was sure that the peace in Ordelia territory could never be threatened again.

“There you have it. The truth. Are you satisfied now? What will you do with it now that you have it?”

Was he satisfied with the truth? Claude exhaled and leaned back in his chair, hand behind his head as he peered up through the domed skylight above him, the stars, as familiar to him as a childhood friend, winking back silently. Steadily.

He wasn’t satisfied. He wasn’t satisfied because his heart knew that could never be true. And when Lysithea asked him if he was being willfully ignorant or obscenely, Claude simply replied that she couldn’t have killed them, that it was never her choice to be a killer.

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change the fact that I did it.”

He admitted that he was no expert in the magical arts, but didn’t magic take the shape of the will of its owner? He was hard-pressed to say that a five-year-old girl could harbor blood cold enough to murder her siblings and family.

Lysithea’s chair scraped harshly against the wood as she pushed herself out of it.

“You can choose to live in a fantasy, or you can choose to accept reality for what it is and do something about it. The Ordelia bloodline will end with me, and it’s because of my magic. I do not have the patience nor the time to entertain you any further. Good night, Claude.”

…

To everyone’s astonishment, Lysithea was at the breakfast table the next morning.

But any semblance of recovery that Claude saw on her face the previous night after her “dinner” had faded, and if eyes were the windows into a person’s soul, Lysithea’s rose-colored irises were glassy, barren and empty. Devoid of any spark of life.

And because nobody could get a handle on how Lysithea felt or if she even wanted to be approached, nobody dared to even greet or acknowledge her presence in the room, carrying on as if she wasn’t even there in the first place. They assumed that was how she preferred it, and they’d be correct if only Clause was not already raising her ire, greeting her with a grin to rival the sun.

“Be still, my heart! She has chosen to grace us with her presence, radiant as the sun!”

And again, to everyone’s astonishment, she answered: “Claude…The only thing more blinding than the sun is your face this morning.”

He chuckled jauntily as he seated himself next to her. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Across the table, Lorenz discreetly threw at Claude a bewildered stare, one that asked What the hell are you scheming now, you fool? Have you a death wish?

He lobbed back with a wink that always had Lorenz on his hackles, one that always said Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.

An anxious maid wordlessly served the youngest Ordelia, but the steaming plate of food placed in front of her received no attention.

“Come now, Lysithea. How can you grow big and strong if you only eat cake?”

“Your idiocy knows no bounds, does it?”

“I don’t consider myself to be a man with limits.”

“Maybe they’re there for a reason. For example, so you don’t go meddling into the business of others.”

“Tut tut, Lysithea. Business isn’t meant for little girls like you to worry about.”

“—Claude! It is most unbecoming to pick fights with a young girl,” said Lorenz as he stood up out of his chair.

“Lorenz!”

Hilda glared at Lorenz under her palm clutching her forehead as he realized his word choice a hair too late.

“I’m not the little girl here, you are the one ruining breakfast!”

Lysithea abruptly planted her feet on top of her chair, towering over Claude in his seat.

“Lysithea!” A scandalized voice cried out but was addressed by no one.

“Y…es, that would be the case if I was the one who just knocked over the poor maid carrying the milk and jam.”

“Claude…” The way Hilda drew out his name sounded like a warning.

“You’re insufferable!”

“If I had a piece of gold for every time someone has told me that, I could be a king.”

“ **ENOUGH!** ”

It could have been a blinding reflection of the morning sun as it rose and angled to hit a decorative mirror hanging on the wall just right. But that never would have explained the charred smell that clung to their clothes for the rest of the morning. And the scorching heat that rushed like a whirlwind into the room, blowing linens and ruffling morning coifs, could never be attributed to anything coming from the kitchen.

But when the dust settled and everyone could pry their eyes open again, it was hard to say who got the worst of it.

You might say it was Claude, who lost his trademark braid, gone with the flash of a flame in the blink of an eye.

You could say it was Lorenz, whose right eyebrow looked just as hopelessly out of place as its missing counterpart.

Or you could even say it was Lysithea, any traces of her irritation and anger draining to horror with which she stared at the tips of her fingers as it sizzled, still warm.

She was the first to make a move, stammering “I…um…I…please excuse me,” face as still as a stone despite her brimming eyes as she dashed out to the courtyard.

The remaining members of the table stared at each other and then at Claude and Lorenz in an endless chain for what seemed like forever.

Until that chain was broken by the sound of Marianne stifling a giggle at Lorenz’s remaining eyebrow.

It started a crack in the dam, smiles seeping and spreading, until it burst, and mirth flowed full force, overwhelming the room.

…

“So. That was something.”

“Go away, Claude. Haven’t you done enough damage today?”

She tore her eyes away from a lily, swiping at her nose with a sniffle.

“I’d hardly call Lorenz’s missing eyebrow ‘damage,’ just now he’s instant comic relief,” Claude said with a wink. “Marianne had to clutch her sides to keep them from splitting.”

When Lysithea didn’t move, he exhaled defeatedly and seated himself next to her on the stone edge of the courtyard fountain, resisting the urge to run a hand through his hair and feeling the absence of a braid that previously anchored him to his former life.

“I apologize if I hurt your feelings. But…you gave me something. You gave me an answer to a question that was bothering me for a while. One that satisfies my quest for the truth way better than what you told me last night.”

Lysithea’s eyes regarded him blankly.

“You can control what you do, you can control your magic. No matter how far towards the edge I push you, you are always in control. If you really are the monster you think of yourself as, I think this morning would have been a much different story.”

“You’re wrong, Claude. All that was just the surface of the kind of ruin I can bring. I…I can’t let my emotions get the best of me like that. Ever, if I am to prevent the tragedy of the Great Fire again.”

Now it was Claude’s turn to wonder if she was being willfully ignorant. He shook his head. “Your emotions aren’t the problem, Lysithea. You just showed me that even at your worst, you can’t bring yourself to hurt another person. I mean _really_ hurt. What I saw this morning wasn’t a demon. It was just…another morning. A really fun morning, in fact. Where I come from, breakfast isn’t a quiet affair; it brims with laughter and liveliness to set the tone for the rest of the day. And that’s something else you gave me.”

Witnessing realization as it dawned on Lysithea’s face was like watching rain clouds drift away to make room for the sun. It was slow to start but increased in speed and intensity as time went on.

“Life is short, Lysithea; you don’t need me to tell you that. What would be the point of it if you never allowed yourself to feel or do anything out of fear you’d hurt others?”

The only reply to Claude’s question was the Ordelia courtyard fountain, water steadfastly pouring but never splashing out from the stone ring of its confines. But Lysithea would never admit that the wetness falling on her hands as her head bent low, shoulders shaking and face curtained by her silver strands, were tears. She silently thanked his silence and discretion as she gathered the fragments of herself that she had let fall to pieces, so wrapped in grief and pain that she never allowed herself to live.

The Blue Sea Moon summer whispered a soft breeze, lightly perfuming the air in the courtyard with the scent of lilies. Lysithea’s shoulders eventually ceased quivering, and her hiccups petered out.

“You know, I read that around this time of year, there’s a village that holds a festival for the lilies that you seem to like so much—well, I guess it’s more with lilies than for…”

“I’ve heard of it,” Lysithea said, a little too quickly. “I-I mean…I’ve also read about it. It’s in Sauin Village, where they hold a festival every year in celebration of the Crescent Moon Star and the Fell Star perfectly aligning themselves to meet in the night sky. I thought I could only dream of seeing it…” Lysithea trailed off.

“It’s not too late. You still could. With the distance, I reckon it’ll take us about two days to get there. Just in time, too. But that means we’ll have to get going early tomorrow, and…on top of that, we can’t have anybody dragging their feet because they didn’t get enough sleep,” Claude remarked to nobody in particular.

“I’ll be sure to not be the cause of that,” said Lysithea as she stared hard at her fisted hands in her lap.

\---

Sauin Village was a quiet fishing village and a trade outpost at the end of a long route. But its peaceful atmosphere belied the fact that it was the home to a small military base that was led by Leonie, a fiery red-headed woman with a penchant for strong drinks and an unerring desire to follow in the footsteps of the fabled, undefeated Blade Breaker, whose existence was hotly contested; yet if you asked Leonie, she would vehemently defend how he personally adjusted and bettered her lance form once in his visit to Sauin.

Her calloused hand gripped Claude’s tightly as she greeted the band into her hometown, without a care for whether or not she was in the presence of nobles.

“You must be here for the festival,” she said. “Feel free to wander about as you’d like, just don’t cause any trouble. Festivities don’t really begin until sundown, lasting into the nighttime for the exact moment that the Fell Star and Crescent Moon Star become aligned. I might be biased, but I haven’t seen any skies with stars as beautiful as ours.”

The sound of a crash burst forth from behind Leonie, followed by agitated shouting.

“Hey! Careful with those lilies! We don’t spend all year nurturing them for nothing, you know!” She bellowed at the men huddled around a cart of lilies that they lost control of and crashed into a wooden fence. Leonie pressed her fingers to her temples. “I don’t know what these people would do without me. If you’ll excuse me…”

The village was electric with excitement as vendors set up booths flanked by bouquets of lilies, their perfume intermingling with the many smells that wafted through the town—fried fish, spun sugar, baked pastries, roasted meats. It was a cacophony of scents as well as sounds and sights. In a small way, it reminded Claude of the home he left behind. His group peeled off, lead in different directions by various temptations.

A burly young man was effortlessly spinning an impossibly massive roll of meat behind his booth, singing, and clearly having a good time. With every turn of the spit, his muscles rippled, testing the integrity of his button shirt.

“R-Raphael?” Ignatz whispered softly, feet leading him to the meat-roaster’s booth in a trance. “Raphael, is that you?”

The singing stopped, but the joyful cadence in his step didn’t skip a beat. He paused only to shout, “Oh, Ignatz! Never thought I’d see you here! Are you and your friends here to enjoy the festival?”

“What are you doing here? Who’s taking care of your sister? I thought…I thought you weren’t going to leave until next year.”

“You know her, she’s way better at running the family business than I am. In fact, if you ask me, she’s probably having an easier time without having to worry about me!” Raphael guffawed good-naturedly. “To be honest, things weren’t looking too good for us, so I had to leave earlier than we had planned. But it’ll work out! I work for the butcher, I get trained by Leonie, and I send money back to my sister! The best part is, I get to smell this meat all day!”

The torn expression on Ignatz’s face was not assured, however.

Ignatz had opened his mouth to say something, but what, Claude never found out, his attention stolen away by a group of children in the leafy, mottled shadow of a swaying tree, reading out of a storybook.

“…Once upon a time, there was a goddess. Her name was Sothis, and she was the mother of all the stars in the sky. Sothis loved all her star-children very much—Seiros, Cichol, Cethleann, Macuil, Indech, and Byleth, the Fell Star. Children, do you know why Byleth is known as the Fell Star?”

“Because she felled a thousand armies!”

“Because she fell from the sky!”

“Because she fell in love!”

The gaggle of children erupted into laughter. Some even scrunched their faces and poked out their tongues.

“You are so silly, children,” the woman smiled, eyes twinkling with amusement.

“One day, as Sothis looked down upon Fódlan, she was very saddened to see its people fighting and spilling each other’s blood. As her tears fell from the sky, the stars above Fódlan could no longer shine, cloaked behind the thick, dark clouds of her grief. But then she heard a young man praying to the moon. This young man sent his prayers every day to the moon, the only light in the sky, for peace to return to Fódlan. So moved by his devotion, Sothis sent the Fell Star, the strongest of her star-children, down to Fódlan to help the young man reclaim the land from the clutches of anger and hatred. And together, Byleth and the young man ushered in an era of unprecedented unity and tranquility.”

The audience of children clapped and cheered excitedly, boys and girls alike raising their toy swords to the sky, towards the Fell Star that was currently invisible.

“But the story doesn’t end there, children. Remember what we are celebrating today?”

They settled back down for the continuation:

“As they celebrated their new dawn, Byleth and the young man came to realize their camaraderie spanned deeper than that of allies and friendship. They both shared a passion for peace, but once they had it, they both realized that their true passion was in each other the whole time. Byleth loved the young man, and he, her. But their love could not be—she had to return to the heavens, and he was bound to his land. When she returned, Sothis and all the star-children were shocked to see their strongest sister cry for the very first time. They all empathized with the dilemma of her heartbreak, so Cichol drafted her a map. Seiros carved her a path. Indech built her a vessel, and Macuil breathed wind into her sails. Cethleann plucked the lilies from her crown to form a bridge between the heavens to the earth, and Sothis filled the sky with a sea of stars for only one night in the Blue Sea Moon so that Byleth and the young man could be reunited until the morning.

“They continued like this, meeting for only one night every year. The young man grew older. His hair greyed and wrinkles formed at the corners of his eyes and smile. Yet he and Byleth still loved each other the same. At the end of his life, on their very last night together, he held her hand, smooth and perfect in his knotted, leathery one, and told her he loved her for one last time.

“Upon his death, he was released from the ties of this plane. And touched by their love for each other, Sothis bestowed his spirit as the keeper of the Crescent Moon Star, in honor of how he had prayed every night at the moon, so that he and Byleth could be together forever in the velvet, indigo sky, watching over the land they had built. You can see them at night, but once every year in the Blue Sea Moon, the Fell Star and the Crescent Moon Star align, just like how the two lovers used to come together. And we celebrate them today, for the peace they brought and their enduring love for each other. The end.”

The children clapped, and so did Claude, despite him being an unintended bystander. It was an entertaining tale to explain an interesting phenomenon, just like the Almyran tales regaling fearsome warriors and cunning generals. And as Almyran tales greatly exaggerated the tales of their heroes, so did Fódlan love their romantic myths and legends.

How much of it was true, no one could really say. But Claude, for one, was hard-pressed to believe in goddesses and the embodiment of stars descending to the earth to bring peace. Stars were stars. They rotated in the sky and sometimes came together for a night. And you could hang your wishes on them and tell them your stories, and they’d just blink back. He should know. He’d been doing it for so long, after all.

But he loved a good story, a good feast even more, and for once, Claude shelved his questions and skepticism to enjoy something for what it was.

\---

It was projected that the stars would align at just before midnight.

In the hours before then, when the sky had already transitioned from turquoise to pink to purple to navy, the village launched stars of their own, setting off fireworks that illuminated the sky and reflected over the water, dazzling spectators as they gathered along the lake’s edge.

Marianne and Hilda were huddled together on their bench, knees touching. Lorenz paused in his cajoling of the poor maiden next to him to look up at the sky. Ignatz had his sketchbook and colors out, but they laid abandoned as he marveled at the sight in front of him. Next to him was Lysithea, the crown of her head graced by a pretty lily wreath woven by Hilda, her hands wrapped around a thin crepe swathing fruit and cream. Raphael and Leonie ceased bickering over which flavor seasoning was the best on his roasted meat skewers even when his stand had sold out long ago.

Claude and Judith, however, were removed from the throngs crowding the lake’s edge, perched upon an overlook a distance away but not too far away from the festival, where it was far quieter, and the bursts of the fireworks could be heard clearly, crisply.

“I don’t know how the hell you did it, boy, but you managed to drag me all across Leicester without an ounce of regard as to what I may be shirking back at home.” Judith shook her head, but the grin playing on her lips said otherwise. “On top of that, in a way, you’ve reunited the Alliance Roundtable. Either you are incredibly crafty in your planning, or there really is a goddess watching over you.”

“Even if I said I had planned this all along, you wouldn’t believe me,” said Claude, a smile flickering on his own.

His eyes drifted away from the spectacle above him to his boot absently toeing the soft loam below him. “But it doesn’t really matter what we think, does it? It’s what the old man thinks that matters. Funny how much power we give a person that the country thinks so little about.”

“Duke Riegan has already made his grave. But it’s not up to him whether this country follows him into it.”

A blue, fiery flower exploded in the sky, accented by glowing, whizzing curlicues, lighting a look on Claude’s face that Judith could not see with his back to her as he gazed into the distances from his perch.

“I don’t think of them as just pieces in a game, you know. All the promises I’ve made…I plan to make well on them.”

“I’ll see to it that you do. If you think for a second that the Gloucester boy is the only pair of eyes on your back, I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken.”

\---

The Fell Star Festival marked the end of a season, the end of a journey, the end of a chapter. Days spent in the cool, benevolent shade, napping or lazily watching the clouds roll by were replaced by a quietly growing agitation as farmers willed their harvest to grow more bountiful, more plentiful in the final stretch before the fall harvest.

Piece by piece like a puzzle, the Alliance children slowly returned to their homeland, back to the roles their lives had fitted for them before Claude entered and temporarily uprooted them. And yet, upon their return, they could not all fit the same way as they once did before. Shaped by the memories of their journey, a nascent sense of dissatisfaction with their old lives itched at their heels. Before, the burdens of their unhappiness were just something they grew to live with, like the shape of their nose or losing the roundness of their youth. But now, an ember smoldered, one that glowed with the hope of being able to fight the fate they were handed.

One day, with the morning sun over Derdriu pouring into the room, Duke Riegan requested the presence of his grandson into his study.

Claude entered with a polite bow. “Your Grace. How can I be of service to you today?”

“So. I heard something interesting from Lady Daphnel.”

The duke peered up through his lenses at him, only for a second taking his eyes off the handwritten letters splayed out on his desk. He paused for what seemed like a long time.

“She said that Lord Holst of House Goneril is calling for a convening of the Roundtable. That the current period of solitude has done nothing but fester ill-will between the lords and weaken the Alliance, and House Riegan, as the leader, should move to end it by hosting the first conference since the tragic passing of the great Godfrey Riegan in his honor. Furthermore, in his letter, he mentioned his notion was inspired by his youngest sister, who, after a short stint with a certain duke’s grandson, came back a ‘changed woman’ and is now pushing for more lucrative trade routes with the Kingdom and fostering better relations within the Alliance.

“Does any of this sound familiar to you?” The duke asked, his tone unreadable, and Claude had trouble fighting off a fleeting memory of his mother asking him the same question after several of his ‘peers’—tormentors, more like—ended up with explosive diarrhea after a feast celebrating the return of General Nader.

“Lord Holst is rarely mistaken if his battle record is any indication. I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting his sister a handful of times, and she seems like the type to know what she wants.”

“Be that as it may, Holst’s cries are echoed—I’ve received letters from House Gloucester, House Ordelia, the margrave—” The duke was overcome by hacking coughs, his body shaking violently as he clutched his kerchief to his mouth. He quickly crumpled it in his fist afterward, but not fast enough for the Claude to miss the splotches of blood staining the silk.

“Claude.” It wasn’t lost to him that it was perhaps the first time his grandfather regarded him by name. “I don’t care for whatever you’ve stirred up in the Alliance, but I will not be the one to clean up whatever mess you’ve made. Goddess knows I won’t be able to even if I wanted to. You will have to see what you have created to the end, whether it is a jewel or a monster.”

It began to dawn on Claude what the implications of his words meant.

“When I die, only then will you witness the true anguish, pain, and bittersweet joys that dukedom can only bring you.”

\---

A conference was held a week later. A month later, Claude can recall the blood pounding in his ears when Duke Riegan announced to the other Roundtable members his appointed successor would be none other than his grandson, Claude von Riegan.

A year later, Claude can remember his grandfather’s words— _“…the true anguish, pain, and bittersweet joys that dukedom can only bring you”_ —as he stood over his grave, grasping a clutch of white chrysanthemums (grown and lovingly picked by House Goneril, who now proudly shipped their fresh flowers and fine jewelry all across Fódlan).

Trade routes were established. Relations with the Kingdom of Faerghus were slowly thawing like ice meeting the first flits of a spring breeze. Meetings were planned with Adrestian Empire officials to discuss the state of the villages dotting the border. Peace was a tenuous, budding thing that required a careful balance of attention but not too much attention for it had to walk on its own someday, and, coming from a land that thrived on small, constant skirmishes, nobody understood that better than Claude.

And then, Count Gloucester openly denounced the Kingdom, citing them as plotting against the Empire to unscrupulously capture their resources and gain their intelligence.

And then, he allied himself with the Empire as the Alliance, the Kingdom, and the Empire all waged war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> congrats! you have reached the end of an arc.
> 
> *wheeze*
> 
> I'm so sorry if you still feel fooled into a Claude/Byleth fic. I can guarantee they'll show up next chapter. 
> 
> as always, thank you, thank you, thank you SO much for reading!


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